‘’Why does the government just let people do this?’ asks Erskine Clarke, a former tenant of rogue landlord Bernard McGowan.’
Photograph: ITV News/The Guardian

This government is failing tenants. From an investigation by this newspaper the Guardian and ITV News into how rogue landlords continue to operate despite being deemed unfit to rent, that much is clear. Vermin, mould, dodgy wiring, bullying eviction tactics – it seems that you can get away with all of it, if you’re rich enough to regard the fines as merely a business expense. All you need to do is move borough or have a third party say they are managing it for you. Furthermore, the government’s rogue landlord database remains empty, six months after launch. It’s not much of a deterrent for those hell-bent on wanton profiteering at the expense of vulnerable tenants and their families.

For to be a tenant in this country is to be vulnerable. There are, of course, good, even great, landlords out there, and their tenants are the lucky ones. But even those who seem all right can let you down when you need them most. Then there are the awful ones, and these number more than is acceptable in a developed western economy. The horror stories never stop.

It’s a UK-wide problem, as I found in 2015 when I interviewed tenants about their poor living conditions. Over the time I have been writing on this topic (as well as living it – I’m a renter, too), tenants have cried to me over the phone, sent me photographs of the mushrooms growing in their living rooms, recounted stories of their things being thrown out on the street, the locks changed, with no warning. I’ve sympathised, perhaps more than many, with rain pouring through my bedroom ceiling, friends crashing on my living room floor and in the airing cupboard, and my mum living in a shared, rented house on benefits up north. We are not alone. There are 5m households in rented accommodation in Britain, while 250,000 families in England are bringing up babies and infants in privately rented accommodation that fails to meet the decent homes standard. For all this talk of millennials, it’s affecting older people, too: the number of middle-aged renters has doubled in a decade. Scottish Widows projects that one in eight retirees will be renting by 2032 – treble the figure in 2017.

On Tuesday, we reported the story of a tenant, Daud Hussein, then 46, who was knocked unconscious after he fell when showering in the dark. He was found bleeding in the street before being hospitalised. This has the appearance of an extreme scenario, but sadly it isn’t. My own landlord took two months to fix the light in our bathroom. We used to laugh about how baroque it was to go to the toilet by candlelight, but it wasn’t funny. Leaking ceilings, mouldy walls – it’s all fairly run of the mill for renters, and so many feel powerless to do anything. As our reporting shows, loopholes abound. A tangle of legislation makes for a labyrinthine, bureaucratic landscape.

There’s an argument for starting again from scratch. Julie Rugg, a senior research fellow at the University of York’s Centre for Housing Policy, who co-authored a study published last month on England’s private rented sector, said the legislation needed a complete overhaul: “There is a lot to be said for saying: ‘You know what, can we just start again?’” she said. I agree with her. We need a new housing bill that is fit for purpose for the 21st century, that will protect private renters from rogue landlords and revenge evictions, keep rents affordable, and punish those who abuse the system. And, as campaigners keep saying over and over again to little avail: we need to build more houses.

From Westminster to Wirral: England's rogue landlords

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Only a Labour government can deliver this. The party’s ideas on social and affordable housing, renters’ unions, scrapping no-fault evictions, three-year tenancies, a levy on second homes, and new minimum legal standards to ensure homes are “fit for human habitation” – to name a few – are encouraging for tenants. The Conservatives aren’t interested in us. Private renters don’t vote for them in large numbers, and a significant number of Tories are landlords themselves. Any private renter who votes Conservative is voting against their own interests. As Erskine Clarke, a former tenant of rogue landlord Bernard McGowan, asks: “Why does the government just let people do this?”